Her Voice
by CbDr177
Summary: Two teens, two lives, two voices. When two people fall for each other from a single voice there is bound to be love, mayhem, hurting...and all around craziness!
1. Two Strangers

I do not own any of the Newsie characters *wipes tears away* in this story except Liz.

And this is my first fanfic so yeah that probably will explain a lot! R&R Thanks!

**Her Voice**

Two strangers:

The year was 1900. The night was cold, the wind blowing lightly throughout the city. People hurried by from their work places to their warm, cozy homes. Some walked slowly, not caring about the bitter cold, because they were simply used to it. Among these walking people were a girl of seventeen and a boy of just about the same age. The two didn't know each other and just happened to be walking in the freezing cities, to two totally separate destinations. Not much about these two was similar; actually just looking at them you could only find one similarity among them. They were poor. They both had shabby clothes; both with thin, worn out coats. But there was one more similarity between the two that is quite hard to find by just looking at a person. Both the girl and the boy were not going to a warm home, where a loving family was waiting for their return.

Let us focus on the boy for a second. The boy had dark blonde hair that came down in small waves, and was a bit dirty. His face was a slight bit tan with thin lips, a decent sized nose, and a strong jaw line. His eyes were two dark blue orbs that shown with hope and pride. But all this was covered by a hat. He walked briskly, even though he was one of those people used to the cold. He had one of his hands shoved in his pocket and one gripping something under his coat. He walked down a few streets and then to a building with a sign that was hanging from one nail. It read "Newsboys Lodging House." He walked up the few stairs and opened the door to the building. He was greeted by an old man sitting at a reception counter. The man had a bowler's hat on, a brown vest and a suit jacket. The man also had spectacles close to the tip of his nose. He was reading the day's paper. The boy walked by the old man and nodded a hello, which the old man replied with the same gesture. The boy then made his way up a flight of stairs and into one of a few rooms on the floor. One was a huge bunk room, full of bunk beds all lined up. One that served as a washroom, and then there was the one that the boy went into. This room was smaller than the others. Inside were a few boys, the same age as the boy. The boys greeted him with a few "heys," "hellos," and some gestures. The boy took his hat off, now clearly showing his features and took a seat in the circle the others were positioned in. He took out the object he had been carrying under his coat and set a brown paper bag on a small table that was at the center of the circle of boys. He slid the bag off the object and revealed a bottle of liquor. Another boy took out a few cups, mugs, glasses; pretty much anything that could hold a drink and passed them out to all of the boys. The boys then passed around the bottle and each poured a little into his own cup. One of the boys raised his glass once everyone had some liquid in their cup and proposed a toast. He looked at the boy who had brought the liquor.

"To Jack"

Now let's go back to that street we had started on just a few minutes ago. We saw a girl, seventeen walking in the streets. This girl was also walking extremely fast, although she was used to the cold wind. She pulled her coat tighter around her small body and picked up her pace. Now despite her being female she had mens clothes on. She had a white men's shirt on, that was quite loose on her and slacks with suspenders placed on her shoulders. She also had a hat placed on her head, pulled low so as to cover her face in shadow and to attempt to shield her face from the bitter wind blowing by her. The girl had light brown hair that was now held up in a bun beneath her hat. Her face was a bit pale and her cheek bones slightly poked through her skin. Her nose was a perfect straight line on a slant, which had a few freckles, as well as on her upper cheeks. Her eyes were a green-gold color, with beautiful dark pupils in the middle of the green forest of her eyes. Her eyes though, not like the boy's did not shine. Well at least they didn't shine with hope and pride. They showed a dark past, and a probable dark future ahead. Under these eyes were slight dark circles weighing her face down a bit.

She passed by a few streets until walking into a new part of town. She had walked farther downtown, towards the battery. Soon she was in the heart of the battery, one of the most disgusting places in the city. Drunken men roamed the streets, and poor women and children searched through the many garbage cans, looking for a few crumbs to call dinner. Many homeless were lying in the gutters, and on broken benches. The remains of a dead horse were among the people, rotting away on the gutter as well. The girl picked up her pace once more and finally made it to a door. The door was stuck in a small building front and a sign overhead read "O' Conner's." The girl opened the door, walked down a flight of stairs, and was greeted by a rather muscular man standing by a desk. He nodded towards her, and she proceeded into the small, overcrowded room.

She entered a room full of smoke; the smell of nicotine and cheap liquor permeated the room. Men sat on chairs near little tables with women dressed in overly inappropriate getups. A small stage held a man at a piano, playing some ragtime music. A bar was in the back left corner of the room and had a man with a dirty white shirt and a bowler hat on. He soon got out behind the bar and came over to the girl.

"Where the hell have ya been?" He asked her angrily. She practically shriveled under him.

"Um, I missed the trolley" The girl replied softly.

"Well go on and get dressed already, what the hell do I pay ya for?"

The girl hurried to the back of the room and down a few stairs to what was a makeshift dressing room. Another woman, in her mid twenties was powdering herself. The girl took off her coat and quickly got dressed into a similar outfit to those of the women on the floor she had just been on. She took a seat next to the women and started applying makeup to her face.

"Hey toots, how ya been?"

"Hi Meg, I'm alright"

"Ya look a little tired there"

"Yeah, well you know, it's hard to get sleep in this business" The girl laughed at her own words, as did her twenty year old friend.

"See ya later toots" The woman said as she got up and went up the stairs to the floor with the bar.

The girl finished applying her makeup and followed the women to the floor. She then walked up another flight of stairs to a floor full of rooms. Just as she reached for one of the door's knobs a woman came out of another room.

"Hey"

"Hi"

The girl turned the knob on the door and right before she started for inside the room the woman wished her a goodnight,

"Have fun Liz"


	2. Two Pasts

I know it's a bit Mary-sue-ish.. but please bare with me!

Oh and i only own Liz's parents and Liz...unfortunately :(

Two pasts:

So we've been talking about two people, who don't know each other and have a few similarities between them. We said that they were poor and didn't have nice homes they were going to for a good night's sleep. But there is another similarity we haven't touched base with yet. This similarity is quite simple, they had problems. Yes, this is a broad topic, and we will explain a bit further.

The boy in this story has a very common problem, and you may have been able to tell from the things you have read before. But if you haven't figured it out, he had a drinking problem. And he probably had it because of his heritage. He was Irish, and he had a father. No, being Irish or having fathers doesn't make you an alcoholic. But having a father who was a drinker and a criminal could definitely do it. Let's explain a little about the boy's, or Jack's (as we now know him by) past.

A young man of twenty three by the name of Henry Sullivan came fresh off the boat from Ireland in 1874. He landed in the great city of New York and within two days made it from Ellis Island to the actual city. His family had died from lives of poverty under cruel landlord rule. He was left orphaned at an early age and finally saved enough money to come to America. He came with a true, kind heart. He fell deeply in love with a young woman who couldn't marry him, for her parents didn't want her marrying "Irish Scum." So the young man simply didn't marry his real love, instead he married another young and poor woman. To be blunt he did not love her. But they married and as years went by his heart grew bitter. He started to hate his wife, his life, his bad job, his tenement apartment. He stopped working and the two grew poorer and poorer as time went by. Soon they had a baby boy, and the mother loved him with all her heart. The father did not. So the father started a new tradition, since he was filled with so much hate and anger he decided drinking could take him out of his miserable life. So he did, every night he took the little money the small family had and went to the local tavern. The mother worked very hard to keep them surviving. When the father would come home, he would sometimes even beat his wife and once their son was older beat him as well. So the boy grew up in a broken home. He loved his mother and hated his father. Soon his father was caught stealing and had assaulted a police officer in the process, and was sent to jail. The mother had died soon after. The boy at age six was taken to the Newsboys Lodging House to work the rest of his young life as a Newsie.

And Jack did just that, but he had known everything that his father had done to his mother, and himself. He never forgave his father, but somehow, even though he truly didn't want to, slightly followed in his father's footsteps. He started drinking when things got tough. But he never got as bad as his father had.

Jack had done pretty good things while being a Newsie. Since he had lived there forever, he had taken the role of being leader of the Newsies living in Manhattan. And he was a fantastic leader, and role model, minus his little problem. But he strictly kept that problem to his close friends, who were his age, and he usually never got out of hand…usually. He did get out of hand with the drunkenness once in a while, and when he did it wasn't pretty, at all. But that's enough about Jack, let's talk about this Liz.

Formerly known as Elizabeth Williams, was of English parents, who had sailed over a few years before Jack's father had. Unlike our Jack's parents, hers had married for love, and did love each other. This caused a problem though. Sometimes when love is too strong people make stupid mistakes, economically speaking. Her parents lived very poor lives, but got by somehow. They sometimes lived on the streets, in tenements, wherever they could get a place to stay essentially. But even though they loved each other, love cannot be the base of income. The two had a baby girl and right away loved her. They kept themselves alive, but barely. They lived in a tenement, and the father had finally gotten a job, but as the years went on tragedy struck. The mother got deathly ill. Her mother died and her father was left a broken man. But not the broken you are probably thinking of. Well at first he was but like Jack's father, his sadness soon turned into anger. He blamed his daughter for his wife's death and hated her for it. The girl was seven at the time. He forced his young daughter to tend to household chores, a wife would normally do. She had to sweep and scrub the floors. She had to cook the meals and wash the dishes. But her work wasn't normal work. For instance he didn't bring home much money and the two didn't have much to eat. So the little girl had to make something to eat from practically nothing. And the worst part of it was, she would work so hard every day, cleaning and such and when her father came home from work, or drinking (it depended on the day) he would yell and scream at her for not doing good work. He would even hit her from time to time. She lived in that house until she was twelve.

But then something even worse happened to her. Her father decided she needed to get a job, but he picked the profession for her. One day he brought her to a bar and practically sold her to the owner. The owner was going to sell her to older men and turn the twelve year old into a prostitute. And so she became one, and continued the job until seventeen, where we are now in our story. And since we discussed how Jack was in his job, it's only fair we say Liz's status.

Most men said she was great, a young fresh squeeze to fool around with at night. And she was good at it. Like most people she took to her job very well and did it the best she could. Well if she went home and the bar keeper told her father she hadn't performed well the night before, let's just say things wouldn't turn out well. So the father and daughter lived off of the commission he got from her night's work at the bar.

Thankfully though her father soon died. He had been drinking way too much one night and could not find his way home. He slept outside on a freezing cold night and froze to death. So Liz was now free from her father, but she didn't quit her job. Being a prostitute was the only thing Liz knew how to do, so she stayed working for the bar keeper.

But you're probably wondering what kind of a problem is that? At first glance, being a prostitute doesn't sound like a real problem, besides it being morally wrong. But it is; Liz was slowly killing herself. She was only looked at as a body, not a person. What she was living wasn't a life, it was a terrible routine every night that she was forced into doing and had to continue for lack of something else to do.

And besides Liz was better than that, she had greater potential. But talking about her "greater potential" is getting ahead of ourselves.

So I guess if you wanted to, you could say that in general they had the same problem. Both Jack and Liz had pretty bad upbringings, and were currently in bad positions.


	3. Two Dreams

Enjoy :)

Two Dreams:

We have one last thing to talk about Liz and Jack before we actually start this story…dreams.

For a five letter word it has a pretty big meaning and a pretty big importance in probably everyone's lives. It's probably one of the few things that define a person, inside. It's that thing that keeps people going, no matter what happens they look to their dream and keep on trying to simply live life. It's the one thing that everyone lives for.

And seeing that everyone has dreams, Jack and Liz had too.

We said that Liz had lived with her mother until the age of seven, when she died. Now when her mother had come over from England she had found a fascination with vaudeville. She went to one or two shoes with her husband before she got sick and would constantly be singing to her little daughter. And Liz loved listening to her mother and as children usually do, copied her mom. She started herself singing all the time and the two would sing for Liz's father, and just sing for fun. Right before Liz's mother passed away she took Liz to a vaudeville variety show. There Liz saw little kids just like herself singing and dancing. She saw choruses of women and men doing dance routines.

Then she saw it, that one act that really started her life. The act that started her reason for living, the act that started her dream.

A woman came on the stage in a pretty dress and stood in the center of the stage. The music from the pit started playing a soft melody. The woman looked up at the audience. But to Liz, the woman was looking at her, singing to her. Then a man came out on the stage and started singing with the woman. The two sang beautifully together, their voices like two birds chirping lovely tunes. After what seemed like mere seconds to Liz, or at least not long enough, the duet was finished and the curtain closed in front of the man and woman, in each others arms. Liz and her mother clapped their hands off, mostly Liz though. For she was in such a daze from the experience, she was in such awe. From that moment on Liz had one thing she wanted to do with her life…perform on the great stage.

So we've discussed Liz's dream, and now it is Jack's turn. His dream was more of a place rather than being something, or doing something. He dreamed of Santa Fe. He dreamed of the out in the open air. He dreamed of clean, empty streets, of horses and Indians.

Jack had, as we said loved his mother, and always listened to every word his mother said to him. Since he was three or so his mother cradled her child in her arms and told him stories of far off places. Places they would soon go to, together, places to get away from their crappy life in New York with Jack's pig of a father. She would read him parts of magazines and newspapers about other countries. Places like the new found lands of China, the savage lands of Africa, the refined country of France, or the wild deserts of the west.

Jack's mother would talk for hours and hours about the Wild West. She talked of clear, blue skies, and one thing that mostly caught Jack's young ears…a place of freedom. In Santa Fe Jack could be a cowboy, and help the westerners, who lived their lives in peace. They lived without worry, without problems, without a care in the world. And Jack wanted that life, he wanted it so much, he simply dreamed of it every day and every night.


End file.
